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Beyond Perfection: D16 Emulate Classic Gear

27 Jan 2017

Before D16 Audio Group was officially established, the small Poland-based team had been developing a standalone plugin called Nitron. Though the product was never released, the team gathered the skills and experience to launch their debut VST plugin called Phoscyon, a 303 emulator. D16 programmer and co-founder Przemek Gocyła recalls, “Phoscyon was the real beginning… It was acclaimed very well and so we continued!”

The D16 team is small, and made up of coders and musical types. Przemek says their purpose is simple. “All we want is to deliver the finest instruments and effects, to help music makers take the sound quality and creativity to the next level. Our mission statement is ‘beyond perfection’, because we always focus on what can be improved.”

The D16 product featured in the Focusrite Plugin Collective is Syntorus, a double-path analogue chorus inspired by classic units from the ’80s. Sebastian Bachlinski, sound designer at D16, refers to Syntorus’ ‘BBD’ emulation, which mimics a Bucket-Brigade Delay: the kind of circuit-design methodology used by hardware designers of yesteryear to create various time-based effects using analogue, solid-state technology. “We spent most of the time on developing a faithful emulation,” says Sebastian. “The end result is an extremely authentic sound characteristic. Also, because Syntorus features two delay-line sections based on this BBD emulation, the effect sounds juicy and lush.”

The future is bright for the D16 team, says Przemek. “We have a real beast about to launch: the multitap sequenced delay. But we also plan a big update of LuSH-101 and few other older products. The future seems to be very interesting for us and all our users, who — taking an opportunity — we would like to thank for all of these years!”